Strict Scrutiny - Fourth Dimension Feminism

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Kate, Melissa, and Leah recap oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case that banned abortion after 15 weeks. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Are we allowed to talk anymore? Is that a thing women can do? Are you there, God? It's me. Strict scrutiny. All right, we're taking the mic back. Let's do this. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court's steady evisceration of reproductive rights, not only through Texas's SB8. As always, we are your hosts. I'm Kate Shaw.

I'm all alone here. You guys have already checked out. I'm Leah Lippman. I am stunned into fucking silence. Mark your calendars. There is a first time for everything. And I am Off Josh, a.k.a. Melissa Murray. We are, as is probably obvious, here today to give you an instant breakdown of the oral argument this morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the other non-SBA major reproductive rights case the court is considering this term. This case is a challenge to the Mississippi statute that prohibits abortions more than 15 weeks after a person's last menstrual period. And Mississippi is asking the court to either overrule Roe and Casey in their entirety, or alternatively, to overrule the portions of the decisions that prohibit states from taking

away from women the ultimate decision about whether to have an abortion before viability. That is to say, Mississippi is asking the court to allow states to be able to ban some abortions that occur before viability. What is not clear is how long before viability the court would say states can prohibit abortions under that new approach that Mississippi proposes. So ladies, where to start? So going into the argument, I think I really thought the court was going to issue a fractured decision with some number of the conservative justices embracing the second argument you outlined, getting rid of the viability line, like the chief justice and maybe Justice Kavanaugh, and then a second plurality of the conservative justices arguing that the court should overrule Roe and Casey entirely, like

Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. After listening to the argument, I now think there's a higher chance of the court outright overruling Roe and Casey entirely than I thought, and I'm genuinely not sure which rationale is more likely. I think either fully overruling Rower Casey or eliminating the viability line are at least equally likely, just based on the argument. And getting rid of the viability line, as we have underscored time and time again, would have been a monumental change that dramatically curbed abortion access as the question shifted to at what point before viability can states ban abortions. But I really didn't think they would take this case,

the first abortion case the Supreme Court has heard since the usurper joined the court and a case where the state hadn't even argued in its petition for certiorari that the court should overrule Roan Casey and overrule those decisions here. But as we've said previously, hashtag YOLO, my expectations were not low enough. So let's get into the argument. Should we start with the chief justice? Why not? Why not? The actual, the formal chief justice.

The formal. In name only. Just call him John Roberts. So John Roberts, just a guy, 109, is, you know, one place to start. I think because doing some analysis of his questions will help us provide sort of evidence for our predictions for the other justices. So he was the one who seemed most interested in pushing the court to focus on why they could and should revisit the viability line. So I think it was in his first question, he sort of pointed out that in Justice Blackmun's private papers, an exceedingly odd source, right, to use to kind of divine the meaning of an important Supreme Court president. And he seemed at least, you know, to his credit, I guess, sheepish for like referencing them. I don't know if he's sheepish enough not to do it. Hey, Blackmun himself, the author of Roe, referred to the viability line as, you know,

both dicta and I think as unprincipled. And like what difference that makes really unclear to me, but obviously suggested he was looking like really hard, like digging pretty deep to try to find some support for this position, that it was like consistent with the private musings of the author of Roe to now find that line unprincipled. But there you have it. Not only was he semi-sheepish about invoking Justice Blackmun's private papers, he sort of suggested that the justices' papers should not be available to the public at all so that they could be invoked. So like, you know, no transparency from him. Like, he's invoking them, but let's keep my shit on the deal. He also argued that viability wasn't really

even at issue in Roe and Casey since I don't know why and attempted to write off those parts of the opinion as just dicta. I mean, you don't know why, and attempted to write off those parts of the opinion as just dicta. I mean, you don't know why, but also the Mississippi lawyer seemed really confused about why, right? So the Mississippi SG, I think that Roberts thought he was serving up a friendly set of questions. We wouldn't actually be doing anything that would even require us, certainly not to overrule, but not even necessarily to refashion those opinions, because even though they are about viability, they really aren't about viability. I'm not sure. But Mississippi's lawyer definitely wasn't sure either sort of what Roberts was driving at there. Well, true to its merits brief,

Mississippi was like, we don't need you, John Roberts. Like, I'm just going to plow ahead with my let's overrule Roe and Casey line. So wasn't it kind of amazing how minimal he became in this argument? I mean, he literally shrank before – well, I couldn't see him, but it just felt like his presence just became diminished. Mississippi was like, I'm not talking to you. I'm not talking to you. And everyone seemed to be talking around him. Yes. He also kept trying to press the argument that all of the arguments about stare decisis, in particular the idea that women in society rely on Roe and Casey, just don't apply to overruling the viability line versus overruling the decisions in full. In one exchange with Solicitor General Prelogger that I think was revealing, he really wanted to press this argument that erasing the viability line and upholding the Mississippi law was small potatoes.

So let's play that clip here. In other words, your discussion of the reliance interests and the ability of women and men to control their lives in reliance on the right to an abortion, the argument would not be as strong, I think you'll have to concede, given what we're talking about, which is not a prohibition. It's a 15-week line. Is that right? You have to hypothesize people who have planned their lives according to a 24-week limit, it is, but not a 15-week limit on abortion, right? Well, I don't think the court has ever analyzed reliance with that kind of parsing. I think here the force of the viability line is that it's clearly demarcated the scope of a woman's protected liberty interest in this context. And the state is not actually asking this court to replace it with a clear 15-week line that would provide some measure of continued protection for this right.

They're asking the court to reverse the liberty interest altogether or leave it up in the air. And if that were to happen, then immediately states with six-week bans, eight-week bans, 10-week bans, and so on, would seek to enforce those with no continued guidance of what the scope of the liberty interest is going forward. Well, that may be what they're asking for, but the thing that is at issue before us today is 15 weeks. That's not how precedent works. Like, once the court gets rid of the viability line, then the question is, what replaces it? And the mere fact that this particular law prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy

doesn't say anything about what, under this brave new world slash new standard a state could prohibit before that. And this line of argument just screamed like gaslighting minimalism to me. Totally. Or like Roberts wanted someone to say to him like, yes, you guys could set down a new rule, which is a 15-week rule. And it's like, that would be – what would be the basis for that kind of rule? But he seemed to want – maybe yes, just gaslighting. But there was like this bizarre naivete, at least like on the face of his questions, that suggested we can discard viability, retain, you know, allow

this Mississippi law to stand and not open the door to much more restrictive state laws. I'm like, that's just absurd. And he actually asked about how or why Mississippi had shifted its focus from the cert petition to the merit stage? You know, in your petition for cert, your first question, and the only one on which we granted review, was whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. And then I think it's fair to say that when you got to the brief on the merits, you kind of shifted gears and talked a lot more about whether or not Roe and Casey should be overruled. And I wanted to give you a chance

to explain that. Mississippi's Solicitor General just like set a bunch of word salad since they couldn't say the real reason. They couldn't say Amy Coney Barrett. Right, which they couldn't say Justice Ginsburg died. And we filed the cert petition when we thought we needed your vote, John Roberts. And now that we don't, we thought we would ask for more. This is one of these places where I sort of wanted Kagan to jump in and press him. And maybe we'll talk later about her relative, just for her, quiet during this argument. But, you know, but obviously changed personnel is the answer. It could have been this sort of, you know, moment of clarity, and he was permitted to evade and not really respond. I mean, the other sense, just while

we're on nominal Chief Justice Roberts, there's an exchange with Julie Rickleman, in which he basically suggested, you know, again, to return to this, his seeming desire to kind of constitutionalize maybe like a 15-week rule. I'm not sure what he was driving at, but he basically said, look, 15 weeks would be consistent with other peer nations, right, that we are kind of an outlier in allowing abortions up to the point of viability with fellow travelers only China and North Korea, he suggested. And Julie, like receipts Rickleman, was like, oh, no, no, no, that's wrong. That is not correct about international law. In fact, the majority of countries that permit legal access to abortion allow access right up until

viability, even if they have nominal lines earlier. So, for example, Canada, Great Britain, and most of Europe allows access to abortion right up until viability, and it also doesn't have the same barriers in place. What do you mean even if they have nominal lines earlier? Some countries, Your Honor, have a nominal line of 12 weeks or 18 weeks, but they permit legal access to abortion after that point for broad social reasons, health reasons, socioeconomic reasons. So their regimes really aren't comparable. And they also don't have the same types of barriers that we have here. So if the court were to move the line substantially backwards,

and 15 weeks is nine weeks before viability, Your Honor, it's quite a bit backwards. It may need to reconsider the rules around regulations, because if it's cutting the time period to obtain an abortion roughly in half, then those barriers are going to be much more important. Thank you. And I thought there was like a tiny bit of Lisa Blatt energy there, but like way more righteous. And she was just like, that's just false. So I thought she was terrific in that answer. Yeah. So that was the chief justice. And as we were saying, he was just kind of on his own, like no one was really talking to him. No one was interested in his questions. And so I think

comparing and contrasting like what the other justices were interested in will give us some indication about what the court is likely to do. So now on to the justice Thomas. Yeah, the actual Chief Justice. Who spoke first. Who spoke first. Who speaks first, who seems to be commanding perhaps a majority of the court for his arguments. So Justice Thomas had kicked off the questioning

and asked Mississippi and later Julie Rickleman and Solicitor General Prelogger to define what the interest or right is in this case. And the question seems designed to get at the idea that the right to an abortion is an atextual right not rooted in the Constitution's text and in his prior writings. Justice Thomas has argued that Roe and Casey should be overruled on that basis. In one exchange with General Prelogger, he was like, well, how am I supposed to know what to do in a case or how to decide a case if I can't look to the Constitution's text to tell me what to do? And S.G. Prelogger was like, well, how am I supposed to know what to do in a case or how to decide a case if I can't look to the Constitution's text to tell me what to do? And S.G. Brelaugher was like, come on, guy,

are you telling me that the Constitution's text tells you what searches are reasonable and other things? It's just kind of a silly line of inquiry, but that seemed to be where his focus was. Well, and Scott Stewart repeatedly emphasized this idea of unenumerated rights being somehow illegitimate. There was actually a fierce rejoinder, which I'm sure we're going to get to from someone on the left. Just to preview a little, Sonia Sotomayor smelled the bullshit that was happening around one first street. And anyways, it's coming. Yeah, it's coming. So maybe we can go in order from least shocking to most shocking justices and their behaviors, because that seemed to be, you know, one theme or note Justice Thomas was pressing. Although I guess you could read into one of his questions some sympathy for the fetal personhood idea.

He asked about whether a state could criminally prosecute a woman who before viability ingested cocaine and injured her fetus. I thought that was really shocking. Like the invocation of the Ferguson case was, was that shocking to you, Kate? It was not in any of the briefs, I don't think. And it did, it seemed to me to sort of signal this potential sort of openness to the yak fetal personhood. But also like a sort of a gotcha question because it's, you know, it's this Fourth Amendment case is how it's decided.

Although obviously like it's a reproductive justice case. But it was the one moment which Julie, you know, was totally all over the case. But Prelogar literally— She had worked with—she worked with Cilla Smith on that case as a baby lawyer. Oh, Julie did? Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay.

So, yeah, because Thomas didn't mention it. He mentioned South Carolina and drug testing. Yeah, and that's Ferguson. Yeah. And it's the Ferguson involving this Charleston Public Hospital. And Elizabeth Berlager, who I until this argument, I literally thought had all of American law in her brain, was like, I'm not familiar with that case. But I think if he had said more, she probably would have remembered the case. But in any event, yeah, I mean, I too read it as as as both trying to play

a little gotcha and potentially signaling some interest in receptivity to a fetal personhood. And that's what I thought. I was sort of like, OK, fetal personhood has entered the chat. I actually thought that was legitimately shocking because it seemed to go from zero to 100. Yeah. And it seemed designed, as we were saying, to get at the idea of fetal personhood. But as Julie Rickleman and S.J. Prelocker said, no one doubted that, and Casey recognized, that states had an interest in the potentiality of life like throughout pregnancy the point is just that that interest doesn't allow states to ban

abortion before viability and the Ferguson case involved you know a question of drug testing and the question isn't whether as Julie said you know states can regulate pre-viability abortions there the question is just you know whether they've imposed an undue burden. But here it involves a ban. And it was just so I actually now see like how it's shocking. But I think things got more shocking from there. Maybe one more point about Thomas and this line, you know, so maybe actually like the counterintuitive take is like he's actually really concerned about this sort of like epidemic of drug testing pregnant black women because like that is what Ferguson is about. And so really, this is sort of the racial justice like storyline. That's like big Pauly Moralito energy from him.

Yeah, I'm sure that's right. I'm sure that was it. Yeah. He's always really concerned about black women. So next least shocking justice. Neil Gorsuch. Yes. Was that who you picked? Yes. That was who I would have picked because, you know, what was notable about him was something he's done before, namely accusing advocates and specifically women advocates in abortion cases of not answering his questions, interrupting them and just being kind of a know-it-all. And even though they are answering his questions, and he's just insisting like in the smuggest way that he just gets it and they do not. And it's just, it's unbearable. It is so unbearable.

And we've alluded to, you know, Justice Kagan kind of having a quiet presence in this argument for her. And a part of me wonders, like, again, like having been a woman in rooms where there are these guys who are so insistent that they know everything and you do not. Like, sometimes it truly is overwhelming. So we saw this move before in the Texas SB8 arguments where Gorsuch was trying to be all clever and outsmart S.G. Prelogger, who is, if these arguments are any indication, probably at least 10,000 times the lawyer that he is. So in the SB8 cases, there was this exchange, which we played on our recap episode and we'll play again here. I'm asking you, counsel, are you aware of any other example of such an injunction?

With that specific term? I can't cite one to you? Not in the history of the United States. You can't identify one for us, right? In the history of the United States, no state has done what Texas has done here. And this time, the same dynamic happened with Julie Rickleman. I just want to make sure I understand what you're telling me, counsel, that if the court were to, in this case, step past viability and apply undue burden, the undue burden test to regulations prior to viability, you would agree with the other side, I think, that that's not a workable standard.

Is that a fair understanding of what you're telling the court? No, Your Honor. You think that would be workable? I believe, if I may clarify, I believe the undue burden test has been workable for regulations. I understand that. If it were to apply, if the court were to, and I thought this is what you were saying in response to the Chief Justice, but maybe I'm mistaken. Please correct me if I am. What is your argument against applying the undue burden standard prior to viability? If the undue burden standard as this Court laid out in Casey, which includes the viability line,

is applied. No, no, no. I'm asking, I know, I know, we're fighting the hypothetical here, counsel, all right? Accept the hypothetical. Hypothetically, the Court were to extend the undue burden standard to regulations prior to viability. Would that be workable or would that not be workable in your view? Without viability, it would not be workable, Your Honor, because it would ultimately, again, always come down to a claim that states can bar a certain category of people from exercising this right simply because of the number of people in the category. And that's not a workable standard and it's not a constitution. I appreciate that clarification. Thank you. The gotcha point he is making is a gotcha point for Mississippi, not the clinics, because Mississippi is arguing that the court should overrule Roe and Casey because the legal test

the court uses to determine whether abortion restrictions are invalid, the undue burden standard is unworkable. But the undue burden standard isn't at issue in this case, or to the extent it is, it's because Mississippi is arguing that the court should extend the undue burden standard to cover a greater number of cases. So just to unpack that, under Roe and Casey, states cannot ban abortions before viability. That's what Mississippi has done here. But states also cannot regulate abortions through regulations that are unduly burdensome. But that's not at issue here.

This is a ban, not a regulation. What Mississippi is saying is, well, instead of saying states can never ban pre-viability abortions, you should ask whether any pre-viability ban is an undue burden, perhaps because it doesn't leave someone a fair opportunity to decide to get an abortion at all. So Mississippi is the one arguing for the courts to expand what it says is an unworkable test. In fact, the Mississippi Solicitor General referred to it as the, quote, most unworkable standard in American law. That's why we like it. That's why we want it. Which Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan pointed out. At one point, Justice Sotomayor interrupted

the Mississippi Solicitor General when he was talking about the unworkability of the Yanty-Burton test in light of the court's recent cases and was like, what hasn't been an issue is the viability line, you fucking moron. She didn't call him. She didn't call him a fucking moron. That was my edit. Surely implied. Discerned from the text of the Constitution,

though not enumerated. And the clinics and the United States government are arguing only that the undue burden standard isn't workable if it were to be applied to bans. And it's not supposed to be applied to bans because bans aren't regulations. They're bans. And their argument is basically it wouldn't be workable in the context of a ban because people would experience changes in their health or family situations that would affect their choice to terminate a pregnancy and might change what their choice would be later on in pregnancy. So if it is unworkable, it's unworkable in the context of a ban. It is not unworkable writ large. So I don't know what you all thought about these two, Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, but to me it seemed like they were both votes to overrule Roe and Casey entirely, but we had also kind of predicted that. So that's part of why they're lower on the list of surprising.

I found them not surprising at all. I also found not surprising Thomas sort of seeding the broader substantive due process overruling argument, like the invocation of Lochner, was, you know, perhaps surprising. I mean, it's abortion, but he has no plans to stop. Justice Thomas will go further and he'll take out the entire line of substantive due process cases. Just give him a moment. Yeah. Although, well, give him a moment. He still does need four votes to do that.

So I have no doubt that is his project. I don't see four votes to join him in that right now, at least. Right now. At least a number of the other conservative justices were paying lip service to the kind of easy distinguishability of the abortion cases from other cases. Yeah, like the way they all paid lip service to it in their confirmation hearings when we talked about Roe and Casey being settled laws. So yeah, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Wow. Okay. Well, we'll get to the others. Sorry, yeah, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Wow. Okay. Well, we'll get to the others.

Sorry. Cassandra, destined to know the truth and not be believed on my own podcast. I'm starting to believe. I'm going to cancel you, Kate. Well, I made at least like 15 minutes in this time. So I guess that's improvement. All right. Kavanaugh.

So let's talk about Justice Kavanaugh. I don't know that this was surprising either, because he seemed at great pains to strike some kind of middle ground where he emphasized neutrality and the prospect of returning this question to the states where it properly belonged, where New Jersey and New York could have different rules from Mississippi based on the particular proclivities of those constituencies. And he just kept hammering that, like, is there a neutral way to sort of get at this? And again, I'm like, I don't think that was surprising. I think everything he has done, like his votes in the procedural decisions on June medical services, like suggested, like he's always trying

to, he doesn't want to be the guy who's overruling Roe versus Wade is what he took. But what he was suggesting, we got to overrule Roe versus Wade, right? He kept saying, right, the Constitution is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. It doesn't protect abortion. Let me say it a different way. He doesn't want to be the guy to enmesh the court in some sort of partisan infighting. He wants to make this look as principled as possible. And the argument for him that he was pushing, I don't know if anyone else was buying it, was the principled way to do this is just to take this back to the states. It should be done through democratic deliberation. And he might want that to be the headline, but the actual opinion will say Roe and Casey are overruled. But that's the

only way to do that. And I think he would very much like to frame it, I totally agree, in these kind of like moderate and neutral terms. But he seemed, I have to say, I actually was surprised. I think he has had this kind of evasive instinct in these abortion cases. I think that was true in the D.C. Circuit, and that was true in his writing in June Medical, which is to sort of seek these procedural out. So he's the one who I actually thought might have some appetite for this argument that Chief Justice asked about, which is that Mississippi had changed its ask between the cert stage and the merit stage. So maybe Kavanaugh can just sort of, you know, defer to another day, you know, this ultimate vote, which I have no doubt that he would, you know, he will at some point cast. But he seems kind of like interested in

taking a slightly slower route. At least that was my assumption going into the argument. But despite his attempt to frame himself as like this kind of like, you know, moderate, like reasonable, honest broker. The median justice. Right. He seemed to be much more on the let's just burn it all down train than I expected going in. Yeah. So I also didn't expect that he was going to be fully on the let's overrule Roe v. Casey immediately train in this case. But he asked no questions about the second argument about viability. Instead, he brought really strong stare decisis is for suckers energy. He brought a list of cases, all the ones the court has overruled and was like, hey, we overrule cases all the time. What's the big deal, ladies? You

know, basically asking Julia Rickleman to tell him which of the cases she disagreed with. Brown v. Board, outlawed separate but equal. Baker v. Carr, which set the stage for one person, one vote. West Coast Hotel, which recognized the state's authority to regulate business. Miranda v. Arizona, which required police to give warnings about the right to remain silent and to have an attorney present to suspects in criminal custody. Lawrence v. Texas, which said that the state may not prohibit same-sex conduct. Knapp v. Ohio, which held that the exclusionary rule applies to state criminal prosecutions to exclude evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Gideon v. Wainwright, which guaranteed the right to counsel in criminal cases. Obergefell, which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

In each of those cases, and that's a list, and I could go on, and those are some of the most consequential and important in the court's history. The court overruled precedent. And it turns out if the court in those cases had listened and they were presented with arguments in those cases, adhere to precedent. In Brown v. Board, adhere to Plessy. In West Coast Hotel, adhere to Atkins and adhere to Lochner. And if the court had done that in those cases, the country would be a much different place. It was also clear to me, at least I thought, that he had spent some time rehearsing lines before the oral argument. And after much practice and much workshopping, he came up with this banger.

The Constitution's neither pro-life nor pro-choice. And I think he was like, wow, that's super clever. And people are going to eat that shit up. Put it on a shirt, sell it at the Fed Soc. He wants that in the opinion. I think his goal here was to strike this tone where this is all principled. Like, it's not partisan. We do this all the time. We have done it before. Things change. It's not a big deal. And it's not the sea change that you think it's going to be because it will simply bring this back to the states. And

it's going to be inaccessible in Mississippi, but it's already basically inaccessible in Mississippi. States are going to do what states are going to do. And it's going to be fine for some people. It's not going to be fine for others. But it's not partisan. And it's completely sort of middle of the road. And this is principled. I think that was the whole goal of this. And I think that's always been the way he's approached this question, like how to make it look like it's all above board. Yeah. How to make it so that he can overrule Roe and Casey and still be invited to cocktail parties and elite law schools in D.C. Like this is the McKay-Coppins profile. This is Ruth Marcus's book, Supreme Ambitions.

And I think that it was no accident that he sort of chose the cases that he chose for his, like, list of greatest hits of overruling, right? Not just Brown overruling Plessy, but Miranda and Mapp and Gideon and West Coast Hotel and Lawrence and Obergefellia, Baker overruling Colgrove versus Green. All of these rights-enhancing decisions, which I think Prelogar extremely effectively responded with when she was at the lectern. But to suggest that, you know, indeed, like, I support all of those decisions, and you liberals, of course, you do as well. And so, you know, this is essentially just another move in the same spirit as those previous overrulings. Libs owned. Exactly.

Done. She was very effective in pointing out that in all of those overrulings, they actually were rights enhancing, not rights retracting. Right. We were incorrect to previously fail to recognize these rights or these procedural avenues to seek to assert rights. And this is, of course, the opposite. But but I don't think we're half waiting for someone like Alito to be like, no, Plessy versus Ferguson overruled the property ownership rights or the associational rights of white people. Like, I was sure that was coming next because, well, let's just talk about it. Or West Coast Hotel, right?

Like, you know, that overturned the property rights of the Lochner bake shop owners, right? Like he, yeah, I'm sure he was thinking it. Okay. So we maybe spoiled the next reveal. I know. No, no, no. It was an excellent transition.

There's only so much time I can spend discussing Brett Kavanaugh and abortion rights before I start projectile vomiting. So we probably reached that point already. So next most shocking, Sam Alito. And I think partially why he's next on the list is, you know, he did a lot of what we kind of expected. You know, he was like, well, clinics, Julie, you're arguing that Mississippi's second argument about erasing the viability line would be equivalent to overruling Roe and Casey and that there are no half measures here. So hashtag YOLO, we should just overrule them. And then also as predicted, he had some real feminist Alito, Betty Fried Alito moments in which he really wanted Julie, who was arguing for the clinics, to concede that women still had an interest in terminating their pregnancies after viability.

What would you say to the argument that has been made many times by people who are pro-choice and pro-life that the line really doesn't make any sense, that it is, as Justice Blackmun himself described it, arbitrary. If a woman wants to be free of the burdens of pregnancy, that interest does not disappear the moment the viability line is crossed. Isn't that right? I think he wanted to get Julie to say something like, and I think the right to an abortion should include the right to decide to have it a late-term abortion. Unclear what was happening here. But the reason that I think Justice Alito makes the shocking list is what Melissa, you alluded to, his extensive colloquy with Solicitor General Prelogger about how, if you think about it, Roe v. Wade and Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision upholding segregation, were really the same. Is it your argument that a case can never be overruled simply because it was egregiously wrong?

I think that, at the very least, the state would have to come forward with some kind of materially changed circumstance or some kind of materially new argument, and Mississippi hasn't done so in this case. Really, so suppose Plessy v. Ferguson was re-argued in 1897, so nothing had changed. Would it not be sufficient to say that was an egregiously wrong decision on the day it was handed down, and now it should be overruled? It certainly was egregiously wrong on the day that it was handed down Plessy but what the court said in analyzing Plessy to Brown and Casey was that what had become clear is that the factual premise that underlay the decision, this idea that segregation didn't create a badge of inferiority had been

entirely mistaken. So is it your answer that we needed all the experience from 1896 to 1954 to realize that Plessy was wrongly decided? Which answered my question, had it come before the court in 1897, should it have been overruled or not? I think it should have been overruled, but I think that the factual premise was wrong in the moment it was decided and the court realized that and clarified that when it overruled. So there are circumstances in which a decision may be overruled, properly overruled, when it must be overruled, simply because it was egregiously wrong at the moment it was decided. Well, I think every other story devices factor likewise would have justified overruling in that interest, that actually it would run counter to any notion of reasonable reliance that it was not a workable

rule that it had become an outlier in our understanding of fundamental freedoms well there was a lot of reliance there was a lot of reliance on plessy the the south built up a whole society based on the idea of white supremacy so So there was a lot of reliance. It was improper reliance. It was reliance on an egregiously wrong understanding of what equal protection means. But your answer is, I still don't understand, I still don't have your answer clearly. Can a decision be overruled simply because it was erroneously wrong, even if nothing has changed between the time of that decision and the time when the court is called upon to consider whether it should be

overruled? Yes or no? Can you give me a yes or no answer on that? It's so hard to know what to say when he's saying this and he's clearly not listening to anything in response. Like, they're not saying you can never overrule decisions. They're not saying you can never overrule decisions when there are calls to do so. And they, you know, S.G. Prelogger, Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor described as like an essential component to women's liberty in any number of ways, enables their full participation in society. Plessy did the opposite. And this is not a difficult distinction. And he was just fixated on this. Another thing that he did, and it was echoing something that Solicitor General Stewart had mentioned in his opening statements, was referring to the fetus as a girl, as a baby girl. And Alito came back to it and sort of referenced it in terms of what about her rights? And it was just like, wow, fetal feminism.

Like, this is some new energy. They are the real feminists, and they are the ones who care about women. They don't want in Mississippi for these girls when they are born to have sex education or access to contraception or expanded Medicaid or greater TANF benefits. This is what, like fourth wave feminist feminism when we're talking about fetal feminism? 3.5. It's 3.2. Okay. Fourth dimension, I think is where we are. Fourth dimension. Yeah.

I think that's probably fourth dimension feminism. Yeah, but that was, I think, in his first 30 or 60 seconds of his opening. Yes. Right after Roe and Casey haunt our country, which I thought was kind of ironic because later in the argument when he's being asked about Casey

and he's like, well, it was crazy. Casey, you know, looks outside of the walls of the court to sort of, you know, improperly consider the public, you know, reactions and this should be an interior sort of inquiry. I think he said that maybe in response to Justice Barrett, but it was like, you literally started with the country. Like that's not inside the walls. Like that was your choice how to start. And I actually on that point wanted to flag,

I was so appreciative that Julie kind of started not with stare decisis, but with this extremely strong statement of the bodily and autonomy stakes for women. Mississippi asks the court to dismantle this precedent and allow states to force women to remain pregnant and give birth against their will. The court should refuse to do so for at least three weeks. Casey and Roe were correct. For a state to take control of a woman's body and demand that she go through pregnancy and childbirth with all the physical risks and life-altering consequences

that brings is a fundamental deprivation of her liberty. Preserving a woman's right to make this decision until viability protects her liberty while logically balancing the other interests at stake. Third, eliminating or reducing the right to abortion will propel women backwards. Two generations have now relied on this right, and one out of every four women makes the decision to end a pregnancy. Mississippi's ban would particularly hurt women with a major health or life change during the course of a pregnancy, poor women who are twice as likely to be delayed in accessing care. And young people or those in contraception who take longer to recognize a pregnancy.

To avoid profound damage to women's liberty, equality, and the rule of law, the court should affirm. And I just thought it was stark and powerful, and I'm glad she started there. So now to the most shocking, most likely to succeed at the Federalist Society Convention. Yeah. And this award goes to dot, dot, dot. Your newest justice, your newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, who came in hot with some really interesting energy. Actually, not in her first question, though, right? Not in her first question. That was a warm-up. She took a moment to warm up.

Yeah, so her first question seemed to Stewart for Mississippi, basically said, you know, there's lots of discussion, and I think actually maybe even in the Thomas question, about other substantive due process cases, contraception cases, marriage cases, sexual privacy cases. Does ruling for you call those cases into question? So extremely friendly question. And actually, you know, interesting that Stewart said pretty categorically, nope, you know, no, no, no, those have nothing to do with this case, which is, I think, like just a facially ridiculous claim. But I think- Adam Mortara, Jonathan Mitchell, die a little inside. Well, and this was actually another place that I wanted Kagan to get in and say,

so do you disavow some of what we've heard from the briefs, the amicus briefs, suggesting that, you know, like they're built on the same foundation, which is, I'm sorry, true. Well, I think she was just literally so shocked by the 12 minutes of men talking about women's reproductive rights that she was sort of shocked into silence and couldn't say anything. Yes, no, I really do. And I sympathize with that, because I feel like I am at times like struggling just in articulating what was happening during Justice Alito's colloquy with S.G. Prelogger. It's shocking. It really is. I did not have reviving Plessy on my bingo card. No.

And also just to step back a little bit, like the idea that of all of the justices, Justice Alito would have been the justice most itching to overrule Plessy. Like when Plessy was decided or when the court heard Brown versus Board of Education. The next day he would have. Because he properly understands that a profoundly erroneous decision need not be retained. But yeah, that was a suggestion. He and he alone would have been ready to do it the next day. But the federal government would have been requiring adherence to Plessy. Like, come on. This is the same guy who joined the concerned alumni of Princeton to maintain that school's single sexsex status as an associational freedom question. So I'm just going to put that in the chat. This is the guy who wrote Brnovich v. DNC, the decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act's protections against discrimination on the basis of race.

This is the guy who wrote Abbott v. Perez, the decision allowing states like Texas to basically suppress the votes of racial minorities by packing them into districts. I mean, it's hard. Too obvious, Leah. You got to deal with his interest in protecting associational freedom. Yeah. Clearly, I'm missing something here. But okay, so I took this a little bit of field. So Barrett started off actually like only like medium warm, but then. But then she came in hot. He got real, real turned up. She came in really, really hot.

And so my vote for most shocking exchange is when Justice Barrett asked Julie Rickleman a question about safe haven laws are laws that were introduced roughly in the 1990s that basically allow parents to surrender their children at police stations or fire stations. They're sort of designated places in communities. And when you surrender your child, they're usually a baby. It is a termination of your parental rights. And the child is then taken in by the state and then offered up for adoption. Here's a clip of her asking the question. Ms. Rickleman, I have a question about the safe haven laws. Both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting. And insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which the forced parenting, forced motherhood would hinder women's access to the workplace

and to equal opportunities. It's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don't the safe haven laws take care of that problem? She brought up the question of safe haven laws again with Solicitor General Prelogger. And I think there's only one way to kind of read her interest in these laws. And I think part of the point is to undermine the argument that Roe and Casey have been essential to women in terms of achieving educational opportunities and employment opportunities, because she seemed to be making this very stark line between the burdens of carrying a pregnancy to term and the burdens then associated with parenthood. And her point seemed to be,

with these infant safe haven laws, all you have to do is have a baby, and then you can get rid of it and put it up for adoption and then go to college and have all of these things that Roe and Casey ostensibly rely on for their defense of abortion rights and abortion access. Like that doesn't even need to matter. Like the fact of infant safe haven laws basically eliminate the need for abortion access because you don't have to be a parent. No, none, no discussion of the actual burden of pregnancy, the physical risk, the medical risk that women take in being pregnant, the incredible maternal mortality rates for Black women in this country and in Mississippi particularly. This shocked me so completely. It was stunning. It was. I totally agree. Here, Julie was, again, fantastic in her response. And she said, look, in Mississippi, it is 75 times more dangerous to give birth than to have a pre-viability abortion.

So it's not like you get pregnant, you have the baby, and it's fine. Like, absolutely no guarantee that that's the case. I was pretty shocked by the kind of minimization of the physical and life burdens of just carrying to term and pregnancy and then giving birth. I mean, this was the genius of Amy Coney Barrett. Like this is what the conservatives said about her when she was a nominee. A woman who is a mother, a mother seven times over who has delivered five children. I mean, she was basically saying like, I did it five times. Like, ain't no thing. You can do it. And then you're freed from all of the other attendant burdens. And she seemed to be saying like, there is no undue burden of requiring a woman to carry a pregnancy to term

as long as you relieve her of whatever is required in being a parent. I mean, is there any other way to read that? No, it was like, it could not, the army could not have felt more Handmaid's Tale, like I think if she had tried, like it was absolutely shocking. Yeah. I mean, utter, I mean, utter mic drop. It is just the idea that it is totally irrelevant, the medical risks that someone faces during pregnancy, the risks and the health consequences they could have for the rest of their lives, the reality that many women have no leave time during work. So if they get sick or have pregnancy complications, they will be hospitalized, they could lose their job. Just risk untold number of things to carry a pregnancy that they don't want to term and force them to do that, which is so many times riskier

than having a pre-viability abortion. And that that is just totally irrelevant because you can give up a child at a firehouse. So one of the things I thought was really evident in this strain of questioning was the religious community's interest in adoption as an alternative to abortion. She really was leaning into this. Like the burden is just everything that happens once you deliver a child.

Everything before that is incidental and can be born. It's like you can deal with it. Yes, she seemed to agree that like having children can impose significant economic, employment, whatever burdens, and you can avoid them by taking your baby to the police station, the fire station, and giving it up for adoption. And that is such an interesting thread in which it sort of joins together the pro-life movement and then this other strain of evangelicalism, not just Christian evangelicalism, but also evangelical Catholicism, where the emphasis is on adoption. And it extends not just to questions of children being born, but like embryos, frozen embryos, this idea of snowflake adoptions where embryos that are no longer needed by the people who have created them can then

subsequently be adopted and implanted in other people. I mean, this is a big part of the religious community's interest in reproductive freedom is expanding opportunities for adoption. We separately talked about this, but we should maybe mention here, Rebecca Nagel's new podcast, the second season of This Land, which is all about this, you know, kind of multi-prong attack on the Indian Child Welfare Act. And spend some time talking about this, you know, real interest in a lot of religious communities in increasing access to adoption, this mismatch. Many, many families encouraged to adopt, often through church communities, but unable to find children to adopt. And so it did feel like there were some undercurrents to the Barrett question, I think, that sounded and kind of, or questions that sounded in these themes you're identifying, Melissa.

Shall we turn to the Democratic appointees? Yeah. Let's start with the most disappointing, Justice. Maybe not surprising. Obviously briar oh um so i mean let's start the first 12 minutes because this was really where come on read the room steve like so justice thomas asked the first question it's a relatively long question the male solicitor general from mississippi is invoking fourth dimension feminism. And then, and of course, Justice Breyer's like, you know what? You know, I'm going to do it. I'm going to talk now. I'm going to go in. And like literally held forth for eight minutes. It was like the longest question, such wind up. And it was just like, is there no one else on your

side that could talk like anyone else that might have something to say? Can't think of anyone. No. He's reading long passages from Casey about how the court's legitimacy will be threatened if they're perceived as overruling decision because of a change in appointments. This is a theme he again brought up with Julie Rickerman. He just starts reading again from Casey and he's like having side conversations with himself about the passages he's reading from Casey. Like, I wonder if O'Connor wrote that. He was literally cracking himself up. Yes. He's laughing in his first interjection to the Mississippi Solicitor General where he's like, I assume you've read

Casey recently. Ha ha ha ha ha. At another point, you know, he interrupts General Prelogger. It's just not reading the room at all. Do you know those allyship workshops that people have where they sort of talk about, you know, sometimes you have to like make space for the people who have real stakes in the issue. You care a lot and it's good that you care. That's what makes you a great ally. Makes you the best ally in the world. But sometimes you have to make space for other people to articulate their stakes and their interests

in the issue. And I felt like he needed a fucking allyship workshop right there. He needs some workshops. Please sign him up. Clerks, please. God. Get it? Oh. I was like, stop. This is, it was outrageous. Yeah.

Outrageous. So the others weren't disappointing, but. I think Justice Sotomayor was like in fuego today. Like she was just like, like she was like, behold my field. It is barren. I have none left to give. Yeah. And she was just like kind of going at it.

I think Justice Kagan was legitimately stunned by what she witnessed. Yeah, no, and it's different ways of responding to the horror that was unfolding in front of them and that I assume has been unfolding for several months kind of behind or outside of the public eye because Justice Sotomayor is shouting from the rooftops like, are you kidding me with this bullshit? You know, she,

in her opening line of questioning with... Well, she was the one who interrupted. It was like, Steve, there's an allyship workshop for you. I'm going to interrupt right here. And she just, she was the one who ended the 12-minute litany of men talking. Yeah. And at one point she says the following. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts. Unclear whether her institutionally-minded colleagues were being institutionally-minded today and listening to her, but she really had the measure of the whole thing. This is gaslighting,

it smells, and what are we going to tell the public who surely will understand that this is on the table, an overruling row is on the table, because this court just changed. And Amy Coney Barrett is sitting in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat. Yeah. I mean, she is the one that brought up how the Mississippi legislators cited the change in the court's personnel as a reason for enacting the law. So- She's like, I never go into a store without having a receipt. Here they are. Right. And, you know, at some point during Justice Sotomayor's questioning of the Mississippi SG, the chief justice interrupted her to try to bring the argument back to the viability line.

And after he was finished, she says, may I finish my inquiry? Like we are not like we're not done. No, I was here for it. I was too. Again, just the specter of all of these men talking and talking in such aggressive ways about what was going to happen in this case was, yeah, a lot. you know, brought up how the health of women, you know, factors into Mississippi's analysis, given the reality that childbirth is many times more dangerous for women, especially poor women and women of color than pre-viability abortions are. So let's play that clip too. When does the life of a woman and putting her at risk enter the calculus meaning right now forcing

women who are poor and that's 75% of the population and much higher percentage of those women in Mississippi who elect abortions before viability, they are put at a tremendously greater risk of medical complications and ending their life. 14 times greater to give birth to a child full term than it is to have an abortion before viability. And I think this was a statement not to the court. I think she was talking to the people, the people outside of 1 1st Street. Like, do you see what is happening here? This is like, when do the women come in? And ladies, when are you going to rise up on this? And maybe to come back to something we've now said a couple of times, I found really disconcerting how quiet Justice Kagan was. And Leah, I think you're

speculating about one possible reason. It's like, it's just, you know, it is just too much. I wondered about, I think you also meant to allude to this a minute ago, but I wondered about whether what is happening behind the scenes around Texas SB8 is just so, such a horror show that she almost can't bring herself to engage with these colleagues. We need to send Regé-Jean over with like some fluids, electrolytes for her, get her back in fighting shape. Yeah. I mean, she had like one long question, right? To the Mississippi Solicitor General and started to say this. But in the end, we are in the same exact place as we were then. Except that we're not, because there's been 50 years of water under the bridge,

50 years of decisions saying that this is part of our law, that this is part of the fabric of women's existence in this country. And it's a good question, but, like, there were so many places where I thought she could have productively intervened and was striking that she didn't. And there was that one moment early on when she and Barrett tried to ask a question at the same time. And eventually Barrett led. And I just I don't I don't know. I don't think there's really much to read into that.

But that was interesting. But then she just never really was very active after that. Do you think that maybe she and Sotomayor are sort of tag teaming like you're like late this is a marathon for us we can't count on steve he's on his own doing an allyship workshop um and they just decided like you know elena you take sba because she was like on fire in that and like sonia you take this one maybe they were they were trading but um but it was also noticeable. Justice Sotomayor was quieter when Rickleman and Prelogger had their time. Like she was basically like, let me eviscerate this dude from Mississippi. And then she sort of did. Yeah.

And I think this is – I think that made sense because Rickleman and Prelogger didn't actually need her help with friendly questions. I think this was a gorgeous ladies of wrestling moment where they were basically tag teaming i think they need to take like a holiday break somewhere resort like a retreat like a girl's trip girl's trip exactly exactly girls trip force pregnancy advocates not Advocates not invited. And drink some Frosé. Drink some Frosé. They re-indoctrinate Steve. They let him come on the trip. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no.

He can't be at least at the beginning of the trip where they rejuvenate themselves. That will take away from its restorative purposes. Maybe he can come later so they can sort of reprogram him. Yeah. Maybe he can step down and they can get a new, like I just think about like a Katonji Brown Jackson. Sherwood Eiffel. Oh God, yes.

Like on the bench instead of Stephen Breyer in this argument. Oh, all right. Well, we got something to dream about, guys. Like fantasy SCOTUS. Okay, so some final notes. We've already kind of alluded to these in Mississippi's opening statement.

Mississippi Solicitor General began with the following claim. Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey haunt our country. And later in the same opening, referred to fetuses as unborn girls. Roe and Casey's core holding, according to those courts, is that the people can protect an unborn girl's life when she just barely can survive outside the womb,

but not any earlier when she needs a little more help. Feminists. We've already talked about Julie Rickleman's opening. I thought General Prelogger also had a really great opening that, as we suggested,

was designed to rebut Justice Kavanaugh's long list of cases that the court has overruled previous cases in. So we can play that clip here as well. If this court renounces the liberty interest recognized in Roe and reaffirmed in Casey, it would be an unprecedented contraction of individual rights and a stark departure from principles of stare decisis. The court has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society.

The court should not overrule the central component of women's liberty. I wanted to highlight something from Mississippi's brief that didn't come up at oral argument, but is another iteration of this fourth wave slash fourth dimension federalism that... Feminism. Sorry, why do I keep saying federalism? Because it's federalism that doesn't want feminism. Right. Okay. Another iteration of this fourth wave feminism shtick, which is in their brief,

Mississippi, in talking about Casey's recognition about the importance of abortion to women's ability to participate fully in society, Mississippi says this of Casey's reasoning. Casey's assessment would, moreover, be greeted coolly by many women and mothers who have reached the highest echelons of economic and social life, independent of the right bestowed on them by seven men in row. It's like they are taking the criticism of the court and criticism of the anti-abortion movement, which is you have a bunch of men restricting women's choices, and they're trying to turn it around on row. Like they're saying, you know, ladies, is it feminist to have a law protect your rights if the law is written in part and supported by men? Should we not allow laws to prohibit sexual assault if the laws were written by men? It's just this horrible false equivalency, false feminism. It grates me. But it's such a standard move, the cooptation of a standard progressive trope.

Like, you know, this time it's feminism. The next time it will likely be racial justice. Like, like they just twist it. It's twisted. Anyway, it's also like, you know, utter bullshit coming from Mississippi, where there is a history of Mississippi imposing upon the reproductive rights of women, including black women. Mississippi appendectomies was a reference to the forcible and compulsory or coercive sterilization of black women in Mississippi. Mississippi doesn't have paid family leave. It eschewed the opportunity to expand TANF benefits that would have helped

poor families. It doesn't have a sex education program that is not abstinence-based. It makes child care unaffordable or maintains an unaffordable child care system. So I don't know really what Mississippi is doing for women other than protecting them with this law that prohibits abortion at 15 weeks. So, you know. With no rape or incest, except. Yeah. Yeah. Super feminist. Good, good work. Good work. Anyway, this is really sad. There's literally nothing to do. I'm sorry. I mean, it's, it's just so bleak. And I have maybe something that semi semi semi uplifting. Okay. Yeah, please. Yeah. So I went to Amherst College to do like a talk. It was like my first work trip since the pandemic. Still not sure. I'm like how I feel about that. I may just go back underground for a while. But

the kids at Amherst were fantastic, like really, really smart. They're freshmen, but like – Wait, did you work with the students in the like five-college repro-justice? No, it was something – So there's a program across the colleges that is like fantastic undergrads, all of whom take like a certificate program in repro-justice. These were not those kids, but I bet like some of them will go on to be in that program. But this was just their point-counterpoint sort of freshman debate kind of situation that's organized by the college. And

they have a number of speakers who have come in over the course of the year. And so I guess I was the last one for the fall. And we talked about Racing Row and the prospect of Dobbs, which is going to be heard on Wednesday morning. Anyway, there were a number of these freshmen who were strict scrutiny superfans. And I was so surprised. Because we usually think about our audience as being lawyers or law students. It hadn't even occurred to me that college students would be listening. So I just want to give a shout out to some of the students that I met, in particular, Jacob from Amherst, who is such a strict scrutiny fanboy. He really is. He is a devoted, devoted listener and is an amazing, amazing second year student at Amherst who apparently has just done really fantastic work, according to his professor, in classes dealing with legal studies.

So I have to think that we had a little something to do with it. So Jacob, thank you for listening. And it was great to meet you at Amherst. I feel like a need partially to like apologize to our listeners. We're sorry. This is like, we're really sorry. Yeah, like, like the the most important thing that I don't want to happen is for people to feel like there's nothing I can do. I should just give up and check out. I mean, there's nothing to be done about what this court or like the future of the United States as a constitutional democracy in which women can participate fully and lead full lives in which they are not merely vessels? I do think, you know, the question of the public, even if there were

people who didn't seem to care about Justice Sotomayor's line of inquiry, I do think they are quite concerned about their legitimacy. I mean, they would not have gone on the troll oral tour if they weren't. And so I think we just we have to stay on their necks. Yes, we have to like, I mean, I really hope that folks from that Supreme Court Commission were listening to oral arguments. I hope the report will sort of underscore what a sea change in the tenor of this oral argument given the nature of Mississippi's initial request. I hope the report will cite, as Justice Sotomayor did, what was said on the floor of the Mississippi legislature when introducing this legislation. A part of me hopes the report cites a Supreme Court justice suggesting there are no liberty, autonomy, privacy, integrity,

dignitary interests in forcing a woman to undergo childbirth and pregnancy if she can. I mean, that is shocking. I'm sorry. It, I it is it is shocking. Like, every every person knows someone who has experienced abortion. I was gonna say experienced severe complications. Oh, during or, emergency abortions. It is like the idea that just pregnancy is not a burden. Like I'll be super clear about this. Like I have children. Motherhood has changed my life in ways both profound and banal and in great ways. I love being a mom.

But the pregnancy itself was physically demanding. It limited mobility. It limited my opportunities in lots of different ways. I mean, there were things I couldn't do for work because I was too pregnant to fly. I mean, things I couldn't do because I had a high-risk pregnancy. To sort of say the burdens are absent because you can just avoid parenthood by giving your baby up at the police station is to miss what the 40 weeks of gestation is. Like, 40 weeks is a long-ass time. Yeah.

To be a vessel. Yes. Right. Anyway. time yeah to be a vessel yes um right um anyway um and and to wear elastic waist pants unironically for like eight months and maybe later because i'll be honest i was wearing maternity pants well past the storied fourth trimester. Well, that was supposed to be funny. That was supposed to be uplifting. It is.

It's fucking more uplifting than saying safe haven laws are a substitute for Roe and Casey. So, you know, I'm just going to take matters into my own hands. Like Justice Thomas, I'm going to end this.

Okay. Once again, we are grateful for our producer, Melody Rowell, who is going to end this. Okay. Okay. Once again, we are grateful for our producer, Melody Rowell, who is going to take this mass of feelings, teeming feelings, and transform it into a coherent podcast for you. We are always grateful for Eddie Cooper, who made our haunting music, and now it's just so appropriate that it's haunted. And finally, listeners,

we are grateful for you for joining us on this journey. We hope this has been cathartic for you. It's been semi-cathartic for us. If you'd like to support the pod in these emergency reproductive rights cry sessions, you can join us on glow.fm forward slash strict scrutiny and become a subscriber. Alternatively, you can check out our website, www.strictscrutinypodcast.com, where we are, of course, going to have a new merchandise line to chronicle and document and commemorate our slow slide into handmade endem. So see you soon. Bye. you